by Nikki Chase
“Or they'll hate it and it’ll collect dust in the corner. You know they're very particular about their food and drinks,” he says.
The couple stops their heated conversation when they realize we’re joining them in this small, enclosed space. We nod at each other. I know who they are, and they probably know who I am. But like most neighbors in the city, we don’t actually know one another.
The wife shoots us an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, my husband is annoyed that I went to the liquor store even though I’m pregnant. I wasn't planning on drinking, but after his lecture, I might need it.”
He looks horrified. He opens his mouth to say, “You—”
“Just kidding, Rafe,” she says in a flat, annoyed tone. Laughing, she tells us, “He’s been weird since he found out I’m pregnant.”
“I understand that,” I say, who else she’s been telling about her pregnancy. Maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to blame Paul for leaking the information to the media. “But it’s hard being a father-to-be as well. I wouldn't be too hard on him if I were you.”
“Oh, you guys have kids?” she asks.
“Well, uh, I do. And she does, too, now,” I say awkwardly.
I don't know why I said it like that, except that I’m caught off guard. I know we’re supposed to put on a show tonight, but I wasn’t ready to be questioned in the fucking elevator of my own apartment building.
It's not like they care if who’s biologically related to my daughter. Hell, they don’t even know my daughter. They're just making small talk.
I glance at Megan, who has just been quietly watching from the sidelines without joining the conversation, despite her obvious excitement at having met “a celebrity couple.” She doesn’t seem to realize that we’re not too different from them.
“Oh, that’s great. Mixed families are awesome,” the pregnant woman says with a polite smile. Her husband gives her an I-told-you-to-not-to-talk-to-strangers look.
Luckily, before the mood becomes more awkward, we arrive at the ground floor, where we can finally extricate ourselves from the situation.
But as soon as we walk out the elevator and into the lobby, we’re met by Paul’s worried face.
Something’s wrong.
He briskly approaches us, while occasionally glancing back at the sitting area of the lobby, where guests often wait to see residents of the building.
“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Hunter, the concierge from the previous shift let her in because he has seen her with your daughter a few times. I asked her if she has an appointment with you, and she told me she does. I just got here and I was just about to call you to confirm.”
“Who are you talking about?” I ask, Paul’s concern making me uneasy.
“Uh…” Paul pauses, like he’s trying to find the right words to say something sensitive. “Your… Uh, Ashley Hunter, sir. I’ve seen her on TV speaking badly about you, which is why I was worried.”
“Ashley? She’s here?” I ask, stopping in my tracks and looking at the couch a few yards behind Paul. Sure enough, there’s a blonde sitting there. She has her head down, playing with her phone.
Fucking hell. As if I needed another problem tonight.
I don’t need Ashley to be telling Megan stuff that she doesn’t need to know. Things have been going really well between the two of us and I really don’t need Ashley ruining everything.
Megan
First Raphael Holt and his beautiful pregnant wife, and now Ashley Hunter?
I feel like I’m getting the inside scoop on the private lives of some high-profile public figures. If Paul is really selling these stories, he could be making bank.
Maybe I should be his friend, so he can continue to supply me with the dirty deets once I’m done with this fake marriage thing.
We can start with the soap opera that is the lives of the rich. And after that, who knows? Maybe I’ll actually get to break an important story, like the secret meetings between Senators, or the expensive gifts that government officials get from various lobby groups.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry, Megan. She won’t hurt you. Just ignore her,” Ethan says, although he’s the one who seems to be losing his cool.
Given the way Ashley has spoken out about Ethan’s cruelty toward her, I don’t blame him for being nervous about bumping into her with his supposed new wife.
“Ethan!” Ashley yells out from the lobby in front of us. I recognize her voice from the TV. Her heels click-clack on the marble floor as she marches toward us.
“Ashley,” Ethan says tersely as he nods in her direction, acknowledging her while dismissing her at the same time. Masterful move.
Ashley walks past Paul and notices me for the first time. She jolts, almost imperceptibly, obviously not expecting my presence.
“What do you want?” Ethan asks.
“What do I want? I came here to warn you. You should be thanking me.”
Ethan snorts.
“Something funny?” Ashley asks aggressively. “You won’t think it’s so funny when you hear from our lawyer.”
“Oh, it’s ‘our’ now, huh? I’m glad you found yourself an ally.”
“Lucas simply noticed that I’m in dire straits and he recognized that you’re the one responsible, so he’s helping me get what I deserve,” Ashley retorts.
“What you deserve,” Ethan snorts again. “You don’t know what you’re getting into with Lucas. You have no idea what he’s capable of. You’re way out of your depth. You’ll get what you deserve, all right, but it won’t be what you think.”
“I came here to help you, so don’t antagonize me. I want to tell you that you’ll get something from our lawyer soon, and you’d better comply. Otherwise, Lucas will be after you. From the speech you just made, obviously you know what he’s capable of.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself just fine. Thank you for your concern, though. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a dinner reservation.” Ethan turns to me and says, “Let’s go, Megan.”
My hand is still on Ethan’s arm this whole time, so I follow when he starts to walk away from Ashley, even though I feel bad about being rude to her. Ethan didn’t even introduce me, and he’s just walking away even though Ashley hasn’t finished talking.
“And who’s this?” Ashley asks as she match our pace.
“That’s none of your concern.”
“Hey, girlie,” Ashley addresses me. “Who are you, and what are you doing with this asshole?”
“Don’t mind her. Just ignore her and she’ll go away on her own,” Ethan tells me before I can even think about how to answer her question.
“So the rumors are true. You are seeing someone.” Ashley laughs mockingly. “And here I thought you were Super-Dad, whose life only revolves around Penny.”
“That’s amazing, coming from you,” Ethan says, unable to resist responding. He’s defying his own advice to ignore her.
“I see you traded me in for a younger model. Well done.” Ashley follows as we approach the double doors leading outside. Looking straight at me, she says, “He’s not who you think he is.”
The doorman lets us out. Ethan’s black convertible is already waiting at the driveway. A teenager wearing a white shirt and a black vest is holding the passenger door open with his gloved hand.
As Ethan leads me to the car, Ashley continues her tirade. “He seems nice, but he’s not on your side. He’ll use you and then spit you out when he doesn’t need you anymore. You can’t trust a man like Ethan Hunter. You’ll—”
The teenager shuts the car door. With the top of the convertible Porsche down, I can’t hear anything Ashley is saying. But she’s still staring at me, and her lips are still moving furiously.
“Sorry about that,” Ethan says as he gets in the driver’s seat. A disjointed slice of Ashley’s sentence enters the car, only to end when Ethan closes the door again.
“Is that your ex-wife?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
&n
bsp; A few days ago, I wouldn’t have dared ask him such a personal question. Yet, slowly, I’m starting to feel like I’m part of his inner circle, rather than just his employee.
“Yeah.” Ethan keeps his eyes on the road as he drives. “Don’t take anything she says seriously. She’s a liar.”
“That seems like a harsh thing to say about the mother of your child.”
“That’s because I don’t think of her as the mother of my child anymore. And my child doesn’t even see Ashley as her mother anymore either.”
“You don’t allow them to have any sort of a relationship?” I’ve heard what Ashley has been saying on TV, about how Ethan is keeping Penny away from her and how she doesn’t have a chance against Ethan’s expensive attorneys. This is a chance for me to get his side of the story.
“Oh, no, Ashley is the one who has chosen not to have a relationship with Penny.”
That’s definitely not what I’ve heard. From my research, Ashley has been fighting to get custody over Penny. She’s been all over TV, talking about how a mother deserves to be with her daughter.
Why would she go through all that, if she doesn’t want to have a relationship with Penny?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ethan says. “I know what Ashley has been telling people. But like I said, she’s a liar. She has visitation rights, but she has probably only seen Penny once or twice a year since the divorce.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“It used to bother Penny so much.” Ethan tenses his jaw in anger, gritting his teeth. “She’d wait and wait for Ashley to show up, only to get disappointed again.
“It took Penny a few years to learn not to expect anything from her mom,” Ethan says, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles are turning white.
“That must’ve been hard,” I say, remembering the prompts I learned in journalism school, the questions and phrases to say to keep the interviewee talking. Ethan may be my enemy, but as an objective reporter of facts, I have to listen to his side of the story, too.
“It was. And I was working even harder than I do today, building my business without knowing if it was ever going to pay off. I’d work my ass off at the office, and then I’d pick up Penny from daycare at the end of the day and watch her all night.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“Yeah, I never got much sleep.” Ethan chuckles. Evidently, even those dark days have their happy moments, too.
We’re sitting in the hottest restaurant in town, a swanky place called Fable.
The walls are covered with a realistic wallpaper that visually transports us to the woods. The dim, warm lighting makes it feel like we’re camping outdoors, except everyone is dressed to impress. It’s like a secret party in an enchanted forest.
Despite the whimsical décor, the restaurant takes food seriously. They only source fresh, local ingredients, and the menu changes depending on what’s in season.
As far as I know, eating here costs as much as I used to make in a week. And even if I could afford it, they’re usually booked solid for months in advance.
“How did you get a reservation at such short notice?” I ask.
“I know the owner. We’ve been talking about him opening a branch at the new mall we’re building downtown.”
Aside from a few tense minutes at the beginning of the night, we’ve been talking about light, unimportant things. I still can’t quite believe that Ashley could do the things that Ethan has accused her of doing, but Ethan doesn’t seem like he wants to talk about it either.
Ethan seems distracted. Maybe he finds me boring. I don’t know, but he’s been staring off into the distance a lot. He doesn’t even realize that women are looking at him, stealing glances when they think their men aren’t looking.
If nothing else, Ethan Hunter is an excellent date to have if you’re trying to impress your girlfriends. He always looks so put together.
Tonight, he’s dapper in a tailored navy-blue suit with a thin, black satin lapel. He wears a crisp white shirt underneath and a black bow tie. The light of the candle on the table dances and flickers, makes his eyes look dark and shining at the same time.
“I hope…” Ethan’s sentence hangs in the air. He’s taking a deep breath, like he’s weighing the pros and cons of finishing it.
“Yeah?” I ask. When he remains pensive, I add, “You can’t start to say something and then not say it.”
“It’s nothing. I just hope that you don’t take what Ashley said seriously. You can trust me. I want you to know that.”
“Okay.”
As is I’m just going to take your word for it, I think to myself. He may be my husband legally, but I’ve never trusted him from the beginning because I know what he’s done.
And the worst part? Technically, Ethan has never done anything illegal, so nobody could get some kind of compensation from him. Also, nobody dares to challenge him in court because he can hire the dream team of legal professionals.
When your enemy is someone like Ethan Hunter, you can’t have too many allies. He’s too powerful. I understand why Ashley has chosen to team up with someone else.
“I know it’s a weird thing to say, but I’m not… I mean, I’m sorry she called you ‘the younger model.’ I just want you to know that it’s not like that at all,” Ethan says.
“I know. I was there when the idea for whole thing was hatched in Penny’s mind. I know you didn’t even have anything to do with it.” I cut into my cake and give him a smile.
It’s so sweet of him to worry about how I feel, I almost forget we’re not on an actual date.
It’s remarkable that the other diners don’t realize that we’re not a real couple, that we’re only here so people can snap pictures of us sharing a meal together.
I realize it’s illogical, but I feel like they should be able to tell. Apparently, a business suit and a dress are enough to camouflage ourselves as one of them.
“Ashley was the one who left me,” Ethan says without my prompting. Ethan’s muscles tense from remembering painful memories. He takes a sip of his wine and says, “Ashley took Penny with her when she left. Penny never liked living with her, but I never had any reason to suspect Ashley of any wrongdoing.
“Then I looked into it, and found Ashley had been basically fucking her way down the list of the country club members, trying to find herself a sugar daddy. She never managed to catch any big fish, though,” Ethan chuckles bitterly.
“I didn’t really care who she slept with, but she frequently left Penny alone at home while she went out to party. And she often invited these men home, where my daughter was. That was unacceptable.”
“Why did you let Ashley take Penny with her?” I have to admit that even though Ethan’s story is wildly different from Ashley’s version, it’s not any more far-fetched than anything she has said. I wonder who’s telling the truth.
“Let’s just say I wasn’t in any condition to take care of a child.” Ethan’s lips form a small smile, while his eyes cloud over with regret. “So I cleaned up my act and started to work hard so I could get Penny back.
“In the process, I got involved with some bad guys. I managed to keep them at bay, but now they’re using Ashley to get to me.
“Bad guys?” I need some clarification on that. To be honest, this whole time, Ethan has been the bad guy in my mind. So who could be worse than him?
“Yeah, well, I was young and I had no clue how to do this whole business thing yet, so I tried a lot of things and failed at a lot of things.” Ethan says vaguely.
“My biggest mistake, though, was to work with a man called Lucas Murdoch. He was—is—a developer who took care of buying the land, clearing it, and building a mall on it. His company is called Primaland; it’s pretty big so you may have heard of it.”
I shake my head. I’ve never heard of Primaland in my whole life, even though I’ve been researching Ethan’s past for months.
“I was under a lot of pressure from
my investors to keep costs down. And Lucas was known for his low prices in both acquisition and construction. So I decided to work with him. I didn’t realize until it was too late that he didn’t only use persuasion when he was trying to get people to sell their land.”
“What did you do?” I’ve put my fork on the table. Sitting on the edge of my seat, I listen intently to Ethan’s story. I’m finally getting the information I need to make sense of it all. The gears in my brain turn rapidly, trying to piece together a new narrative based on his side of the story.
“I fired him, of course. It wouldn’t have been right to keep him on board after he did something like that. What kind of a message would I be sending to my other employees?” Ethan asks rhetorically. “Sure, I needed money to get Penny back, but I knew I could do that even without Lucas Murdoch, and without compromising my brand.”
To my surprise, Ethan’s paints himself as a pretty decent person in his stories. It sounds like he handles his problems calmly and fairly, doing his best despite the challenges life throws at him.
Is he just viewing his own actions through rose-tinted glasses? Or have I been wrong about Ethan this whole time?
Have I spent eight years believing a lie?
Ethan
“I’m sorry. I got carried away. I must be boring you with these old stories.” I realize I’ve been babbling on my own, while Megan has just been listening to me. At least she looks like she’s listening to me, but maybe she’s just being polite.
“No, not at all.” She smiles sweetly, making me want to grab her, lean her down on my arm, and claim those lips with my mouth. I still can’t get over how fucking beautiful she looks tonight.
“I don’t know why I went on and on like that. I don’t usually talk that much.” It’s true; I surprise myself by how comfortable I feel around Megan. Without even realizing it, I put my guard down and start telling her stuff.
There’s something about this girl, although I can’t quite put a finger on it. I can’t come up with the words to explain it. It’s just something I feel in my guts.